Restoration of a "Rapid" Beast or falling in love

I was looking for a long time on ebay for a good table saw. The good ones are to expensive, the cheap ones where are really cheap or broken, but after a few month of searching i found one and …........i got it. There is no id plate on the machine so i think she is out of the 60´s because of the cast aluminum case from the on-of switch. In the 70´s they started to use plastic. The price was very good ( 261€ or about 350$) Yeapyyyyyy. The shipping cost me another 100€ but than she was standing in front of my door. But what now???? She is a very heavy lady with over 600 pound and has to go downstairs in my basement workshop. I dismantled the old lady in 3 pieces ( the body, the motor and the cast iron plate).The motor has 3.5 hp and is the original. Now we can carry it with 2 man downstairs. When she was down i decided that i will disassembled everything to clean and look if something is worn or broken. I was very happy to see that everything was just to clean and i put a little graphite on the trunnion and some grease on the spindles. Now everything works just with 2 fingers. The next step was to give the old lady a new make-up. Dark green Hammerit was the choice to fit my other mashines in the shop. But i was not happy and thought what was wrong. Then i remembered the old british race cars with their golden rims. So i sprayed the base golden with a small stripe. Now she lookes perfect. Next was the table. It is straight had just very litte rust and almost no pitting. I cleand it with a wire brush and waxed it that she get a little bit slippery. ;-) . Put a new blade in and it was time for the first cut. I pluged it in (360Volt) and cut a few stocks. Everything was straight and in angle, no bearing howling and she goes through thicker wood like a warm knife through butter. Now i decided to make a few new knobs and handles. I found a few pieces walnut and shaped it in form. A few coats of shellac and they were ready to install. The last picture show a few of them.I think i am not ready ( build a T-square fence, a mobile saw base station with a few drawers and a sliding table extention) but for now i can work with her.

That’s one solid looking piece of machinery, and nice job on the restoration! It’s always makes me feel good when I see an older piece of machinery, that still has lots of potential, be given the chance to keep earning it’s keep.